Internet porn changes our expectations about sex

Brain scan images show that watching online ‘adult’ sites can alter our grey matter, which may lead to a change in sexual tastes

By Norman Doidge / The Guardian

Illustration: Yusha

Cambridge University neuropsychiatrist Valerie Voon has recently shown that men who describe themselves as addicted to porn (and who lost relationships because of it) develop changes in the same brain area — the reward center — that changes in drug addicts. The study, not yet published, is featured this week in a program on British TV — Porn and the Teenage Brain. Neuroskeptics may argue that pictures of the brain lighting up in addicts tell us nothing new — we already know they are addicted. However, they do help: knowing the reward center is changed explains some porn paradoxes.

In the mid-1990s I, and other psychiatrists, began to notice the following. An adult male, in a happy relationship, being seen for some non-romantic issue, might describe getting curious about porn on the burgeoning Internet. Most sites bored him, but he soon noticed several that fascinated him to the point he was craving them. The more he used the porn, the more he wanted to.

Yet, though he craved it, he did not like it (porn paradox 1). The cravings were so intense, he might feel them while thinking about his computer (paradox 2). The patient would also report that, far from getting more turned on by the idea of sex with his partner, he was less attracted to her (paradox 3). Through porn he acquired new sexual tastes.

We often talk about addicts as though they simply have “quantitative problems.” They “use too much” and should “cut back.” However, porn addictions also have a qualitative component: they change sexual taste. Here’s how.

Until recently, scientists believed our brains were fixed, their circuits formed and finalized in childhood, or “hardwired.” Now we know the brain is “neuroplastic,” and not only can it change, but that it works by changing its structure in response to repeated mental experience.

One key driver of plastic change is the reward center, which normally fires as we accomplish a goal. A brain chemical, dopamine, is released, giving us the thrill that goes with accomplishment. It also consolidates the connections between neurons in the brain that helped us accomplish that goal. As well, dopamine is secreted at moments of sexual excitement and novelty. Porn scenes, filled with novel sexual “partners,” fire the reward center. The images get reinforced, altering the user’s sexual tastes.

Many abused substances directly trigger dopamine secretion — without us having to work to accomplish a goal. This can damage the dopamine reward system. In porn, we get “sex” without the work of courtship. Now, scans show that porn can alter the reward center too.

Once the reward center is altered, a person will compulsively seek out the activity or place that triggered the dopamine discharge. (Like addicts who get excited passing the alley where they first tried cocaine, the patients got excited thinking about their computers.) They crave despite negative consequences. (This is why those patients could crave porn without liking it.) Worse, a damaged dopamine system makes one more “tolerant” to the activity and needing more stimulation, to get the rush and quiet the craving. “Tolerance” drives a search for ramped-up stimulation, and this can drive the change in tastes towards the extreme.

The most obvious change in porn is how sex is so laced with aggression and sadomasochism. As tolerance to sexual excitement develops, it no longer satisfies; only by releasing a second drive, the aggressive drive, can the addict be excited. And so — for people psychologically predisposed — there are scenes of angry sex, men ejaculating insultingly on women’s faces, angry anal penetration, etc. Porn sites are also filled with the complexes Freud described: “Milf” (“mothers I’d like to fuck”) sites show us the Oedipus complex is alive; spanking sites sexualize a childhood trauma and many other oral and anal fixations. Porn does not “cause” these complexes, but it can strengthen them, by wiring them into the reward system. The porn triggers a “neo-sexuality” — an interplay between the pornographer’s fantasies, and the viewer’s.